Alcatraz – Jorge Garcia on how JJ is his favorite guy in the world

Jorge Garcia is known to millions of viewers for his role as Hugo ‘Hurley’ Reyes on JJ Abrams’ popular TV series Lost. He is once again back on an island, working with Abrams on Alcatraz, another supernatural outing.

Garcia portrays Dr Diego ‘Doc’ Soto, an expert on the infamous island prison that closed in 1963, relocating its detainees to other institutions. But it seems the 302 criminals are mysteriously reappearing in San Francisco in 2012, continuing to commit horrendous crimes. It is up to Dr Soto, Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and the enigmatic government agent, Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), to try to capture and return these criminals to Alcatraz.

Your character ‘Doc’ is an expert on Alcatraz, but now he’s going to meet the actual criminals.

It’s like a sense of culture shock. When you read about historic criminals, there’s a certain romanticism that you put on them, but then when they’re in front of you, these are scary, scary human beings.

It’s a wake-up call for him when he volunteers with enthusiasm and then finds out this is a lot harder than he thought it was going to be.

Had you visited Alcatraz before doing this series?

I had not. I had been to San Francisco a few times, and I did get some ‘Property of Alcatraz’ souvenirs, but I hadn’t actually gone on the island and done the whole tour.

Are there better roles on TV than doing movies?

I wouldn’t knock doing movies, because there’s still nothing like the movies. There’s a feeling I get when I go to the movies. I like to sit up close, sort of bathing in the screen. That’s never going to go away. But I wouldn’t say that one is overpowering the other.

The Artist is such a great movie. It’s so great to have a movie that puts a smile on your face.

It seems that the enthusiasm and charm sometimes falls by the wayside to cynicism, and so [it’s great] to see something like that show up and create an experience in the theater.

It proves there still are good movies out there, but there’s a lot on TV that has stepped up.

Is doing another project for JJ great?

He’s my favorite guy in the world. He’s just great, and he’s also incredibly busy. To be in a room when he walks in, I’m always happy to see him.

Are you lifelong friends with JJ now?

Yes, JJ changed my life. And I’ll never stop thanking him for it. If JJ asked me to do anything, I’d say yes first and then read it.

Do you and JJ have a shorthand now?

Shorthand? No. This is how JJ directs. ‘That’s good, that’s good, Do it again.’

What’s the one thing you miss most about Lost?

Living in Hawaii, especially the people.

When you sit back and think about your Lost experience, do you every think, ‘Damn, we did really good work?’

As an actor, yes, definitely. Lost showed up, and the way the writers wrote for me and gave me opportunities to show so many other sides of a person [was great], to show someone who really was funny, in his responses and his everyman qualities to how he was reacting to this island.

But you also saw he had a lot of tragedy, a lot of grief, a lot of strange occurrences in his life to react to. He had a little romance. Lost got me to show off more, and that’s what I really loved about it.